Voltaire to Cideville - 1762 May 24
to M[onsieur] de Cideville No. 197.
At the Délices 24 may 1762
1 My dear and old friend, we both are beginning
2 to be at the age when one must
3 carefully take care of preserving the remains of one’s
4 machine. We witnessed the death of our dear abbot
5 Du Resnel. You have been sick, but you were
6 fortunately born. You are an oak, and I am a
7 shrub; I still feel the storm which I
8 endured; I bet that you drink Champagne wine
9 while I drink milk, and that you eat partridges
10 and turbots while I am reduced to a chicken
11 wing. You visit beautiful ladies, you run
12 from Paris to your estate, and I am confined.
13 Work, which was my consolation, is forbidden to me.
14 I can no longer mock Brother Berthier, or
15 Pompignan or Fréron. I am declining significantly.
16 The publication of the Corneille edition will nevertheless
17 move on. There was a big dispute
18 to find out if Corneille had plagiarized Calderon’s Heraclius.
19 To end the dispute, I translated this
20 Spanish farce, which we call tragedy.
21 I have had to refresh my knowledge of Spanish, which
22 I had almost forgotten. This has cost me some effort,
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23 but I assure you that I was well rewarded.
24 It is good to see who was this Calderon
25 who is so praised: he is the most extravagant,
26 and most absurd fool who ever got involved in writing.
27 I shall have his joke printed alongside
28 Corneille’s Heraclius, and all the nations of
29 Europe, who will subscribe to this book,
30 will be able to judge that good taste is only found
31 in France. It is not that there are no sparks
32 of genius in Calderon, but it is the genius
33 of the Petites Maisons[1].
34 Moreover, I am quite sure that you do not
35 think that my commentary is written à la
36 Dacier. I criticize severely, and I praise with
37 enthusiasm. I think that the work will be useful,
38 because I always seek only the truth.
39 Mademoiselle Corneille will not understand my commentary;
40 she recites poetic lines quite nicely; we have turned her
41 into an actress; but it will still take a long
42 time before she will be able to read her uncle’s works.
43 Her father is now reformed with M. de Chamousset,
44 his protector. He has already visited us, he
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45 is coming back again; we gave him a
46 small advance on the published edition. He is going to Paris.
47 What will become of him over there when he will own only his name?
48 Farewell, my dear friend. I hope that my letter
49 will find you either in Paris or at Launay.
50 Madame Denis intends to write to you.
51 For the two of us here you are the cause of many regrets. I
52 embrace you tenderly.
V.
53 forgive me for not handwriting this;
54 I am extremely weak.
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[1] Les Petites-Maisons was an insane asylum in the 6th arrondissement in Paris, created in 1557. In his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), in his entry, “folie”, Voltaire mentions this asylum.
